Evaluations of Grants

Launched in 2010, the Education Initiative is a $45 million grant program to Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR), the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), and Yeshiva University (YU). The three institutions have each been awarded $15 million to support the field of Jewish education through the development and enhancement of advanced degree, leadership, and certificate programs; improvement of recruitment activities; and induction support to new teachers and education leaders. At the conclusion of the Education Initiative in 2015–16, more than 1,000 educators are expected to ...More

Over the past decade, observers of Jewish education have seen a growing interest in experiences that integrate Jewish learning with outdoor, food, and environmental issues. Local, regional and national philanthropists and practitioners have invested time and resources to develop innovative learning opportunities that address these issues, including new initiatives and organizations, some of which have expanded their reach globally.
Seeds of Opportunity: A National Study of Immersive Jewish Outdoor, Food, and Environmental Education (JOFEE) is the the first-ever national survey on JOFEE. ...More

Beginning with a Planning Grant in 2007, the North Shore Teen Initiative (NSTI) designed, developed, launched, and implemented community-based Jewish teen education and engagement in 23 towns and cities north of Boston. The Foundation supported efforts to transition NSTI to be sustained by local funding.
This model documentation details the evolution of the NSTI. By sharing all of the components of NSTI, along with some lessons learned along the way, we strive to help other communities adapt the model and implement their own teen Jewish ...More

In 2008, with a grant from the Jim Joseph Foundation, the Foundation for Jewish Camp (FJC) launched the Specialty Camps Incubator to support the creation and development of five new Jewish specialty camps. A key purpose of establishing the new specialty camps was to attract Jewish teens who were not attending other Jewish camps.
In 2009, the Jim Joseph Foundation engaged Informing Change (formerly called BTW informing change) to design and implement a multi-year evaluation of the Incubator, assessing whether and how ...More

Launched in 2010, the Education Initiative is a $45 million grant program to Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR), the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), and Yeshiva University (YU). The three institutions have each been awarded $15 million to support the field of Jewish education through the development and enhancement of advanced degree, leadership, and certificate programs; improvement of recruitment activities; and induction support to new teachers and education leaders. At the conclusion of the Education Initiative in 2015–16, more than 1,000 educators are expected to receive degrees ...More

The Jewish Resource Specialist (JRS) program is a flagship professional development initiative of the Early Childhood Education Initiative (ECEI) of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties. JRS is being piloted in five Bay Area preschools over a three-year period. It is designed to deepen the overall Jewish experience in Bay Area Early Childhood Jewish Education (ECJE) institutions and support parents in making Jewish choices for their families. Teachers in this ...More

Beginning with a Planning Grant in 2007, the North Shore Teen Initiative (NSTI) has designed, developed, launched, and implemented community-based teen education and engagement in 23 towns and cities north of Boston. The Foundation is supporting efforts to transition NSTI to be sustained by local funding.
The evaluation details the achievement of NSTI’s outcomes from 2009-2012. In particular, the evaluation examines outcomes related to market penetration and awareness. Using research conducted among teens and parents in ...More

The Jim Joseph Foundation has identified engaging Jewish teens in educational experiences as fundamental to the Foundation’s mission of fostering compelling, effective Jewish learning experiences for young Jews, primarily ages 13-30.
For the past two years, the Foundation has been collaborating with other funders to explore possible funding strategies to further address the dramatic drop in young peoples' Jewish educational engagement during the teen years. Under the guidance of an Advisory Group that included funders, teen education experts, and ...More

For more than a decade, Pardes’s selective two-year Educators Program (PEP), funded by The Avi Chai Foundation, has recruited and trained Judaic studies teachers and helped place them in North American day schools. In 2008, the Jim Joseph Foundation began funding the Pardes Educators Alumni Support Project (PEASP) to provide induction support, offering professional development and fostering retention among PEP graduates. Since it was founded in 2000, PEP has graduated 122 Jewish educators, awarding them each a Certificate of Jewish Studies ...More

Repair the World and The Jewish Agency for Israel commissioned the study, “Serving a Complex Israel: A report on Israel-based Immersive Jewish Service-learning,” to learn more about the appeal of and outcomes associated with participation in Israel-based immersive Jewish service-learning (IJSL) programs.
This paper reports on an exploratory study of 332 North American alumni of 12 different IJSL programs who participated in programs from August 2009 to June 2012.
The study addresses the following primary research questions:
1. ...More

In 2010, the Foundation for Jewish Camp, The AVI CHAI Foundation, and the Jim Joseph Foundation began working collaboratively on Nadiv, a ground-breaking initiative that created six new positions for Jewish experiential educators that are each shared by a Jewish summer camp and a Jewish school. The purpose of the program is to demonstrate how Jewish educational institutions collaborating in this way might measurably improve the quality of the educational experiences they provide to the young people ...More

The Jim Joseph Foundation invests in promising Jewish education grant initiatives. We partner with effective organizations that seek to inspire young people to discover the joy of living vibrant Jewish lives.